Monday, May 8, 2017

I found this wonderful little Internet article on the economy of the desert frontier of the Roman Empire. Simply, you can't fund an empire and military machine without a strong economy and the tax revenue it generates.

So much information on the Eastern Roman economy and society was never written down by contemporaries. We have to use archaeological evidence and work backwards to paint a picture of the world at that time.

(Haaretz) - The tiny olive grove sits atop a dry canyon in the middle of the Negev desert, surrounded by barren hills and a few wisps of withering vegetation. Despite the parched setting, the ancient, gnarled trees are alive, their branches heavy with green leaves and ready to bear fruit.

Researchers believe these few trees, located a handful of kilometers outside the ruins of the ancient Byzantine settlement of Shivta, grew there through no fluke of nature. They may be among the last living witnesses to a complex civilization that built prosperous towns and farmed the Negev during the Byzantine period, more than 15 centuries before Zionists started imagining they could make Israel’s desert bloom.

Fresh research is shedding new light on these Byzantine desert dwellers – who were they? How did they shape their environment to such an extent? And why they ultimately, and quite mysteriously, abandon the lands they had fought for so hard?

Wine is still produced in the desert today
just as it was in Roman times.

Researchers say these questions are key not just for historians but for any society, including modern Israel, that wishes to develop and grow sustainably in an extreme environment like the desert.

“This was a complex society, so this question is very relevant to us, because the next time that the Negev was so densely settled was with Zionism and the creation of Israel,” says Haifa University archeologist Guy Bar-Oz. “It is very relevant for us to understand how they did it and what went wrong.”

From frankincense to farming

If we visited the central Negev 1,700 years ago, far from a barren wasteland peopled mainly by nomads and lizards, we would see a countryside dotted with farms and monasteries.

Vast fields of grain, olive groves and fruit orchards lined the wadis; vineyards produced some of the most popular wines in the ancient world. There were also at least seven large towns supporting trade and agriculture in the area.

Although their remains are listed by UNESCO as World Heritage sites, archaeologists have barely scratched the surface in some of them.

The regional capital, Halutza – once the seat of a bishop, public baths, churches and a theater – has largely been left buried under the sand, mostly due to lack of funds and frequent looting by local Bedouins.

The second largest Byzantine town in the area – Ruheibe, also known as "Rehovot in the Negev" – has been partially excavated. But it is difficult to access, including because it is surrounded by an Israeli army firing zone.

Still, archaeologists have managed to glean some information about the people who lived there, says Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who in January published an article on research in Ruheibe in the Israeli journal Kadmoniot.

The Eastern Roman province of Palaestina Salutaris covered the area of the Negev, Sinai (except the north western coast) and south-west of Transjordan, south of the Dead Sea.

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The province, a part of the Diocese of the East, was split from Arabia Petraea in the 6th century and existed until the Muslim Arab conquests of the 7th century.

Tribal population of Nabateans

The inhabitants worshipped in churches and wrote in Greek, the Byzantine empire’s official language. But the architecture of towns like Ruheibe – clusters of small houses and tight winding alleys to keep the sand out and provide shade – point to a local, tribal population, Dahari says.

The names on the tombstones of Ruheibe’s cemetery and the morphology of dozens of skeletons that were dug up, further indicates that most of the inhabitants were Nabateans, Dahari told Haaretz during a visit to the site.

The Nabateans were a semi-nomadic Arab people best known for building the spectacular rock-cut city of Petra and a trade empire that brought spices and luxury goods from the Orient to the Mediterranean. In fact, the Byzantine towns of the Negev started out in pre-Roman times as Nabatean trading posts on the spice route between Petra and the port of Gaza. Later they also profited from the passage of Christian pilgrims between Jerusalem and St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.

So why would rich merchants, fat on the profits from selling frankincense and myrrh, decide to settle down and become farmers?

“Imagine if we stopped using oil: what would happen to the Saudis?” says Dahari. “They could not go back to being nomadic shepherds, also because their numbers have increased, so they would have to use their money to create something else.”

And that’s probably what the Nabateans did. In the 3rd century C.E., the Roman empire underwent a political and economic crisis that disrupted trade routes. During the next two centuries, the fall of the Western empire and the spread of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean further reduced the demand for the luxury goods that the Nabateans had supplied.

“They could not move north, because during the Byzantine period, the Holy Land was very densely populated. So they had to settle and farm this land, possibly with the support of the Byzantine administration and outside experts,” Dahari explains.

The climate would not have been much different from today, with rainfall averaging around 100 millimeters a year, he says. So, their entire lives were centered on capturing and storing the rains that each year fall in the Negev during brief, violent showers.

The entire city was plastered and paved to channel water toward the cisterns dug in the courtyard of each house. Larger cisterns and open-air reservoirs were built in the surrounding countryside, along with wells that could reach the underground aquifer – up to 63 meters deep, like a 20-story building.

This system would have been just enough to provide water all-year round to satisfy the basic drinking and washing needs of the inhabitants, according to Dahari. But what about the fields?

For this, just around the town of Ruheibe, the inhabitants built 250 kilometers of terraces, dams and canals, using a vast 180,000 cubic meters of stone, according to a survey conducted by Dahari and his team. This system would be used to control the violent floods that usually follow the rare storms in the Negev. Instead of running off into the desert, the water would be channeled into the terraces, where it would soak the ground, helping to keep it moist for the rest of the year.

Parrotfish were imported from the sea to the desert.

Importing parrot fish

Similar systems have been found around other settlements in the area, including at Shivta, where a solitary olive grove still survives atop a stone terrace which, judging from the pottery archaeologists found there, was built in the Byzantine period. (Scientists are still working to try to date the trees).

“Once this system is working, it can provide the equivalent of 500 millimeters of rain instead of the average 100,” explains archaeologist Yotam Tepper. “But it’s very labor intensive. It requires constant maintenance: if one dam is breached, one terrace is damaged, the water escapes, the ground doesn’t get soaked and you lose everything.”

Despite the backbreaking work required, from the 4th to the 7th century C.E., the communities of the Negev did not merely survive, they thrived. Locals could afford to import exotic goods, like parrot fish from the Red Sea, hundreds of kilometers away. Meanwhile, they shipped their produce, including fruits, olive oil and especially wine across the Mediterranean and beyond.

The distinctive amphorae in which the sweet, highly alcoholic wines of the Negev were packaged have been found as far as Italy, France and Britain, says Bar-Oz.

And then, almost overnight, it all ended.

If you walk through the streets of Shivta and other Byzantine desert towns you notice something strange about the crumbling houses: most of the entrances were neatly sealed with large stones.

It’s as if one day the inhabitants packed up their belongings, sealed their homes and left, never to return.

Invading Muslim Arab Warriors mayhave collapsed the local economy.

Why that happened remains a mystery, and is one of the key questions behind a project, led by Bar-Oz and funded by the European Union, to investigate the Byzantine Negev using advanced scientific methods.

Go north, young Nabatean?

Many theories have been put forward. It is however too early to draw conclusions, Bar-Oz says.

One preliminary study, based on dating samples from the ancient garbage dumps outside Halutza, suggest that organized refuse collection in the city abruptly ended around the year 540. This could point to a crisis connected to the Plague of Justinian, a pandemic that is estimated to have killed millions in Europe and the Middle East at that very time.

But there is little or no evidence in the area of mass graves or other signs of such a catastrophe, Bar-Oz notes.

Other data from the garbage dumps of Halutza indicates that as the years went on, locals used an ever-increasing amount of low-quality wood as fuel, which may suggest they were facing climate change.

Finally, one theory that historians have long favored, connects the decline of the Nabatean settlement of the Negev to the Muslim conquest in the first half of the 7th century.

However, there are few signs of violence and destruction in the Negev towns associated with the arrival of Mohammed’s followers. Many of the settlements, including Shivta, continued to be inhabited in the early Muslim period – albeit by a smaller population.

Dahari, the archaeologist who dug at Ruheibe, explains it all by theorizing that the Muslim takeover of the Middle East and the collapse of Byzantine control in the region meant the inhabitants of the Negev simply became freer to leave and seek greener pastures in more fertile areas of the Levant.

“You only live in the desert if you have to,” Dahari says. “The inhabitants here were Arabs, just like the new conquerors, so many probably converted to Islam and went north with their brethren.”

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Constantine the Great

Founder of Constantinople which would later be the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for over one thousand years. Proclaimed religious tolerance of all religions throughout the empire. (306 - 337)

Julian the Philosopher

Born in the new city of Constantinople. Described himself as "first among equals", participated in debates and made speeches in the Constantinople Senate, fired thousands of bureaucrats, proclaimed that all the religions were equal before the law, author. (361 - 363)

Theodosius II

Emperor 408 to 450. Known for the Theodosian law code, and the construction of the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople. When Roman Africa fell to the Vandals in 439, both Eastern and Western Emperors sent forces to Sicily, to launch an attack at the Vandals at Carthage, but this project failed.

Leo I "The Thracian"

Emperor from 457–474. He was born Leo Marcellus in Thracia or in Dacia Aureliana province in the year 401 to a Thraco-Roman family. He served in the Roman army, rising to the rank of comes. Leo is notable for being the first Eastern Emperor to legislate in Greek rather than Latin. He worked to liberate North Africa from the Vandals with an expedition in 468 of 1,113 ships carrying 100,000 men, but in the end lost 600 ships.

Justinian The Great and Theodora

Emperor 527 to 565. Justinian was the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as a first language. Justinian's reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". His general Belisarius conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, extending Roman control to the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the Empire after more than half a century of barbarian control. The prefect Liberius reclaimed most of southern Iberia, establishing the province of Spania. Under his rule there was a uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is still the basis of civil law in many modern states. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia.

Maurice

Emperor from 582 to 602. A prominent general in his youth, Maurice fought with success against the Sassanid Persians. Once he became Emperor, he brought the war with Persia to a victorious conclusion: the Empire's eastern border in the Caucasus was vastly expanded and for the first time in nearly two centuries the Romans were no longer obliged to pay the Persians thousands of pounds of gold annually for peace. Maurice campaigned extensively in the Balkans against the Avars – pushing them back across the Danube by 599. He also conducted campaigns across the Danube, the first Emperor to do so in over two hundred years. In the West, he established two large semi-autonomous provinces called exarchates, ruled by exarchs, or viceroys, of the Emperor. Maurice established the Exarchate of Ravenna, Italy in 584, the first real effort by the Empire to halt the advance of the Lombards. With the creation of the Exarchate of Africa in 590, he further solidified the empire's hold on the western Mediterranean.

Heraclius

Emperor 610 to 641. Heraclius' reign was marked by several military campaigns. The year Heraclius came to power the Empire was threatened on multiple frontiers. Heraclius immediately took charge of the ongoing war against the Sassanid Persians. The first battles of the campaign ended in defeat for the Byzantines; the Persian army fought their way to the Bosphorus. However, because Constantinople was protected by impenetrable walls and a strong navy, Heraclius was able to avoid total defeat. Heraclius drove the Persians out of Asia Minor and pushed deep into their territory, defeating them decisively in 627 at the Battle of Nineveh. Soon after his victory he faced a new threat of the Muslim invasions. In 634 the Muslims invaded Roman Syria, defeating Heraclius' brother Theodore. Within a short period of time the Arabs would also conquer Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt.

Constantine IV - "The Bearded"

Emperor 668 to 685 AD. His reign saw the first serious check to nearly 50 years of uninterrupted Islamic expansion. Constantine organized the Empire for the massive First Arab Siege of Constantinople in 674–678. If Constantinople had fallen all of Europe would have been open to Islamic invasion.

Leo III - The Isaurian

Emperor 717 to 741. Defended the Empire during the Second Siege of Constantinople against an invading Arab army of 80,000 men and a fleet of over 2,500 ships. Leo reformed the laws with the elevation of the serfs into a class of free tenants. Leo began the iconoclast campaign.

Irene of Athens

Irene of Athens Byzantine Empress Regnant from 797 to 802. Prior to becoming Empress regnant, Irene was empress consort from 775 to 780, and empress dowager and regent from 780 to 797. It is often claimed she called herself basileus 'emperor'. In fact, she normally referred to herself as basilissa, 'empress', although there are three instances of the title basileus being used by her. Irene was born to the noble Greek Sarantapechos family of Athens. She married Leo IV in 769. Upon Leo's death she became regent for the future Constantine VI. Irene was almost immediately confronted with a conspiracy against her close to home and in Sicily. Irene withstood an invasion by a large Arab army. She subdued the Slavs of the Balkans and laid the foundations of Byzantine expansion and re-Hellenization in the area. Irene's most notable act was the restoration of the Orthodox veneration of icons (images of Christ or the saints). Pope Leo III, who needed help against enemies in Rome and who saw the throne of the Byzantine Emperor as vacant (lacking a male occupant), crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800.

Theodora

Empress as the spouse of the Byzantine Emperor Theophilos, and regent of her son, Michael III, from Theophilos' death in 842 to 855. She carried on the government with a firm and judicious hand, and replenished the treasury. The Empress organized the Roman navy and army in multi-front wars against the Arabs and deterred the Bulgarians from an attempt at invasion.

Basil II - The Bulgar Slayer

Emperor 976 to 1025. Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontier, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire's foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed by later authors as "the Bulgar-slayer" by which he is popularly known. At his death, the Empire stretched from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube to the borders of Palestine, its greatest territorial extent since the Muslim conquests four centuries earlier.

Zoë Porphyrogenita

Zoë (c. 978 – June 1050) reigned as Byzantine Empress alongside her sister Theodora from April 19 to June 11, 1042. She was also enthroned as the Empress Consort to a series of co-rulers beginning with Romanos III in 1028 until her death in 1050 while married to Constantine IX. Theodora and Zoë appeared together at meetings of the Senate. Theodora was the junior empress, and her throne was situated slightly behind Zoë’s in all public occasions.

John II Komnenos and Irene of Hungary

Emperor from 1118 to 1143. The greatest of the Komnenian emperors. In the course of his twenty-five year reign, John made alliances with the Holy Roman Empire in the west, decisively defeated the Pechenegs in the Balkans, and personally led numerous campaigns against the Turks in Asia Minor. John's campaigns fundamentally changed the balance of power in the east, forcing the Turks onto the defensive and restoring to the Byzantines many towns, fortresses and cities right across the peninsula. In the southeast, John extended Byzantine control from the Maeander in the west all the way to Cilicia and Tarsus in the east. In an effort to demonstrate the Byzantine emperor's role as the leader of the Christian world, John marched into Muslim Syria at the head of the combined forces of Byzantium and the Crusader states.

Michael VIII Palaiologos

Reigned as Emperor 1259–1282. Michael VIII was the founder of the Palaiologan dynasty that would rule the Empire until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. He recovered Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261 and transformed the Empire of Nicaea into a restored Roman Empire. During his reign there was a temporary naval revival in which the Byzantine navy consisted of 80 ships.

Constantine XI Palaiologos

The Last Emperor of the Romans 1449 to 1453. Constantine faced the siege of Constantinople defending his city of 60,000 people with an army only numbering 7,000 men against an Ottoman army of over 80,000. He personally led the defence of the city and took an active part in the fighting alongside his troops in the land walls. At the same time, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain the necessary unity between the Genovese, Venetian and the Greek troops. When the city fell to the Turks he tore off his imperial ornaments so as to let nothing to distinguish him from any other soldier and led his remaining soldiers into a last charge where he was killed.

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About Me

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.
Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It is us. Only us.
Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach."
- - - Rorschach, Watchmen (1986)

Saturday Sultress - Meg Turney
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*Queen of the Nerds*
I never heard of Meg but now she is on my radar.
*Megan LeeAnn* "*Meg*" *Turney* (born March 12, 1987) is an American
internet pers...

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Constantinople

Founded by by Constantine the Great in 324 AD, Constantinople was the captial of the the Eastern Roman Empire and the center of Western civilization for centuries.

Byzantine Algeria

The 6th century Byzantine walls, popularly known as "Solomon's Walls" and flanked by thirteen square towers.Tebessa, Algeria. At its peak the Empire stretched from Morocco and Spain to Italy, Egypt, the Euphrates River, the Caucasus Mountain to the Danube River.

Byzantine Mesopotamia

The citadel of the Roman-Byzantine fortress of Zenobia near Halabiye, Syria. View from the southern wall looking down to the Euphrates River.

Byzantine Italy

The Castle of Sant'Aniceto (also San Niceto) is an Eastern Roman Empire castle built in the early 11th century on a hill in Motta San Giovanni, now in the province of Reggio Calabria, southern Italy. It is one of the few examples of High Middle Ages architecture in Calabria, as well as one of the few well-preserved Byzantine fortifications in the world. The name derives from that of St. Nicetas, a Eastern Roman admiral who lived in the 7th-8th centuries. The castle is one of the few Byzantine fortifications subjected to the work of restoration and recovery.

Byzantine Croatia

The Byzantine Fortress of Tureta in Croatia. The fortress is the most significant structure on the Kornati islands dating from the Byzantine period. It is located on the island of Kornat and was probably built in the 8th century. It is assumed that the fortress was built up for military purposes to protect and control the navigation in this part of the Adriatic Sea.

Byzantine Egypt

Saint Catherine's Monastery lies on the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. The fortified monastery was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD, although there was already a church at the site erected by the Empress Helena in 330 AD. The Monastery also has a copy of the Achtiname, in which Muhammad bestowed his protection upon the monastery.

Byzantine Greece

Angelokastro or "Castle of the Angels" is one of the most important Byzantine castles of Greece. It is located on the island of Corfu at the top of the highest peak of the island's shoreline in the northwest coast near Palaiokastritsa and built on particularly precipitous and rocky terrain. It stands 1,000 ft (305 m) on a steep cliff above the Ionian Sea and surveys the City of Corfu and the mountains of mainland Greece to the southeast and a wide area of Corfu toward the northeast and northwest.

Byzantine Anatolia

The Roman-Byzantine Castle of Harput in Anatolia. The strong point Harput was part of both the Roman and Byzantine defensive systems. Eastern Anatolia saw many huge military campaigns from Roman to Byzantine times. This area was involved in multiple wars with the Persian Empire, Arabs and Turks.

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